Where going to get your computer to the next level. From what would be the best hardware to get the highest possible frame rate in that newly launched game? What CPU will be the best fit for you for your multi tasking needs to what type of cooling you will need to keep your computer running cool all night long . All about high end computer rigs is what we are about
R6300 looks very different from Netgear's other routers, including the previous top-shelf WNDR-4500. The R6300 has a broad face that reclines back on its base, whereas the routers in Netgear's WNDR line stand straight up and present a narrow profile to the user. Both have internal antennas, and neither can be wall-mounted. The glossy black plastic enclosure is a fingerprint magnet, so you'll want to avoid handling it once you've set it up. The R6300 is a concurrent dual-band 802.11n/802.11ac model, delivering three spatial streams on the 2.4GHz frequency band with maximum theoretical throughput of 450 megabits per second, and another three spatial streams with maximum theoretical throughput of 1.3 gigabits per second on the 5GHz frequency band.
Netgear isn't manufacturing a media bridge; instead, the company recommends that consumers obtain two R6300 routers and configure one as a wireless bridge. That's what I did for this review. The R6300 comes with two USB 2.0 ports to support sharing a network-attached USB storage device and a USB printer simultaneously. I didn't test printer sharing, but the router turned in a solid performance on the storage front.
The R6300 doesn't offer quite as many features as Asus's 802.11ac router. It comes with a DLNA-certified media server, built-in Samba and ftp servers, and parental controls via OpenDNS (much like the D-Link DIR-865L); but it lacks an iTunes server or VPN pass-through. Like the RT-AC66U, the R6300 does provide guest networks on both bands (Buffalo's WZR-D1800H doesn't provide a guest network at all).
Benchmarking 5GHz 802.11ac performance
I used an AVADirect laptop equipped with a 2.5GHz Intel Core i5-3210M CPU, 4GB of memory, and an integrated Intel Centrino Ultimate-N 6300 Wi-Fi adapter to run my benchmark tests. The Ultimate-N 6300 can send and receive three simultaneous 150-mbps spatial streams (450 mbps in total); most adapters are limited to handling two (300 mbps in total). This was all the streaming I needed to evaluate the Netgear's 802.11n performance (on both the 2.4GHz and 5GHz frequency bands). To measure the router's 802.11ac performance on the 5GHz frequency band, I configured a second R6300 as a wireless bridge and connected it to the AVADirect's ethernet port.
To test the router, I positioned the client successively at five spots inside and outside a 2800-square-foot, ranch-style home (distances from the router are noted in each chart below). I used the open-source IPERF benchmark (and the JPERF Java graphical front end designed for it). To measure the router's downlink TCP throughput, I set up the laptop as a server and used a desktop PC hard-wired to the router as the client.
The R6300 finished in first or second place in most of my test locations, and it delivered impressive wireless TCP throughput of 473 mbps in the bedroom, where the client is in the same room, just 9 feet from the router.
The Netgear router's performance dropped slightly, to 432 mbps, when I moved the client and bridge to the kitchen, which is 20 feet from the router and separated by one wall. The Asus RT-AC66U performed better in this location than it did in the bedroom, and captured first place on this measure.
The next two benchmark runs took place inside my home theater. This is a room-within-a-room design, with four walls of 2-by-4 framing and drywall inside four walls of 2-by-6 framing and drywall, with about 6 inches of dead air and fiberglass insulation separating them. My intent was to optimize the room's acoustics, not to build a Faraday cage, but many lesser routers and other wireless devices have had trouble penetrating it. However, none of the 802.11ac routers I tested had any difficulty reaching the client in this room. The R6300 managed to perform just a wee bit better than the Asus RT-N66U and the D-Link DIR-685L to earn a first-place finish here.
Since many people will want to connect the gear in their home entertainment system to an 802.11ac network, I decided to measure TCP throughput with the wireless bridge inside the built-in equipment cabinet in my home theater (the floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall cabinet is constructed from cabinet-grade plywood, including the back). The R6300 took a much bigger hit in TCP throughput performance at this location than did the other two routers I just mentioned, with wireless TCP throughput dropping down to 129 mbps. I suspect that the orientation of the wireless bridge is responsible for this. When it was sitting on the coffee table in this room, it obliquely faced the router. When it was in the cabinet, it was perpendicular to the router. Still, the R6300 delivered enough bandwidth to allow me to wirelessly mount and stream a Blu-ray ISO image of the movie Spiderman 3 from a Windows Home Server 2011 machine in my home office to a home-theater PC in that entertainment center, including the movie's high-definition multichannel soundtrack.
The R6300's performance bounced back when I moved the client and the media bridge to the first of my two outdoor test locations, an exterior patio enclosed by three walls and one half wall with glass windows. The signal from the router travels a more direct path to this location, even though it must pass through two insulated walls. In the real world, I doubt that anyone would try to set up a media bridge outdoors because dragging the bridge and finding an outlet (and likely an extension cord) are too inconvenient. The R6300 performed slightly better here than it did in the kitchen, delivering wireless throughput of 435 mbps for a first-place finish at this location.
TCP throughput dropped to 122 mbps when I moved the client and bridge to my second outdoor test location, a picnic table 75 feet from the router with four insulated walls in between. That data transfer rate was only good enough for a third-place finish on this measure, but achieving such high throughput that at so distant a range is pretty amazing. Most 802.11n routers operating on the 5GHz frequency band can't reach the client at all here
Benchmarking 2.4GHz 802.11n performance
The R6300 delivered a middle-of-the-road performance on the 2.4GHz frequency band, but it was twice as fast as D-Link's DIR-685L when I moved the client to the farthest test distance from the router. Both devices can deliver perfectly acceptable performance for Web browsing here, but the Netgear is much quicker when transferring files across the network.
Netgear's R6300 lagged slightly behind the rest of the field with the client hardwired to its four-port gigabit switch, but the difference was negligible.
To evaluate the R6300's performance as a network-attached storage device, I connected a 500GB Western Digital My Passport USB drive to one of the router's USB ports. I used a stopwatch to time how long it took the unit to copy a few files from a PC to the drive over the network (a write test), and then I copied a few files from the USB drive to the networked PC over the network (a read test). The PC was hardwired to the network.
I created a large-file test by ripping a DVD (Quentin Tarantino's From Dusk to Dawn) to the PC's hard drive. Copying this 4.29GB file from the PC to the portable hard drive required slightly more than 6 minutes, while reading it from the drive required a little less than 7 minutes. These scores put the R6300 in the middle of the pack on this benchmark. I couldn't test the Buffalo WZR-D1800H on this measure, because that router recognizes only drives formatted in FAT32 or XFS.
Unless you rip a lot of movies from DVD or Blu-ray discs, you'll rarely move a single large file to a hard drive attached to your router. A more common task is to move batches of small files back and forth across your network. To evaluate each router's performance in this scenario, I created a single folder containing 595MB of small files (subfolders containing music, graphics, photos, documents, spreadsheets, and so on).
The Netgear R6300 was very quick at writing this batch of small files to and reading them back from the attached USB disk drive, performing each tasking in about 1 minute, as the charts below indicate.
Bottom line
In the competition for the title of best 802.11ac router on the market today, Netgear's R6300 finishes a very close second to the Asus RT-AC66U. It's not quite as fast as the Asus in most benchmarks, and it doesn't offer as many features as the Asus does. The performance gaps, however, are not huge.
The one area where Netgear has a leg up on Asus is in apps. Install Netgear's Genie app on your smartphone, and you can use it to monitor and manage your network. Asus was getting ready to launch their AiCloud service as I was wrapping up these reviews, however, so Netgear's advantage may be short-lived. And Netgear will never be able to overcome the RT-AC66U's removable, upgradable antennas.by michael brown pc world
The GTX 700 series will come by March 2013 Source say at the earliest and will offer around 25-30% better performance and power efficiency as the 28nm process is refined. The legendary GK110 part that is speculated about so much is expected to remain in the non-consumer realm only – in the Tesla K20 and Quadro K6000 cards
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AMD’s Sea Islands aka HD 8000 will probably debut slightly earlier than Nvidia’s GTX 700 series but they will be having the same process yield problems as Nvidia.
nVidia released the new set of beta drivers for their GeForce cards, which contain substantial improvements to help prepare for Far Cry 3.
The new beta drivers contain all the same improvements that 310.54 and 310.61 beta drivers had, the new set optimizes performance in preparation for Far Cry 3′s release in North America.
Release notes indicate a performance boost of up to 38% in Far Cry 3 using a GeForce GTX 680 and up to 6% using a GeForce GTX 660.
Along with this are the optimizations added previously for Call of Duty: Black Ops II and Assassin’s Creed II, and some updates to the nVidia 3D Vision profiles to a handful of games, notably 007 Legends, The Amazing Spider-Man, and Medal of Honor: Warfighter. In their release, nVidia has also stated that they are actively working on fixing issues that have been reported in games such as Battlefield 3 and Assassin’s Creed III.
Far Cry 3 was released today in Europe but doesn’t hit shelves in North America until Tuesday, but nVidia is keeping up-to-date and constantly testing to ensure that the release goes over smoothly for PC gamers, and that GeForce cards can efficiently handle such a performance-driven game.by omegaphoenix
NVIDIA is stepping up to the plate by offering their GeForce customers something similar. While the primary focus of their new 310.54 drivers are to offer optimal release-day performance and DX11 optimizations for Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III, there are some additional benefits included as well. According to the driver’s release notes, many games will see up to 16% better framerates even though the lion’s share of improvements are reserved for the aforementioned big-name titles.
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 and Assassin’s Creed III are likely going to be two of this holiday season’s hottest titles and NVIDIA worked with both game’s developers to include TXAA support. This should lead to high quality anti-aliasing without a significant framerate reduction. Additional optimizations for these titles are included within the 310.54 driver as well, allowing for an approximate 26% framerate increase over the WHQL version currently posted on NVIDIA’s download page. If you have an NVIDIA card and will be buying Call of Duty: Black Ops 2 or Assassin’s Creed III, be sure to install this driver.
Source: GeForce.com
Alongside the aforementioned items, NVIDIA has added an automatic LOD bias for SGSSAA which can be applied through NVIDIA’s Inspector tool. The passage below is from a GeForce.com post which details the changes to this ultra-high quality AA routine: Several years ago Fullscene Sparse Grid Supersampling Anti-Aliasing was added to the GeForce drivers as an advanced anti-aliasing option for those with high-end systems. When enabled and correctly configured, SGSSAA significantly increases the quality of Multisample Anti-Aliasing, helping remove aliasing that even 8xMSAA struggles with. Configuring SGSSAA to reach this level of detail can at times be tricky due to the need to counteract texture blurring that occurs when using the technique. With a Negative LOD Bias, applied via NVIDIA Inspector, texture quality can be restored, but unfortunately the correct value can only be ascertained through trial and error. Following repeated calls from users for a solution, we silently introduced an automatic LOD Bias feature in last month’s 310.33 beta driver, which we’re pleased to officially announce today. Now, users need only enable Sparse Grid Supersampling in the profile of a compatible game in NVIDIA Inspector, and the new feature will do the rest.
NVIDIA continues their work on improving multi card scaling and the 310.54 stack adds SLI profiles for Hitman: Absolution, Hawken, Natural Selection 2 and Primal Carnage.by skymtl
After being in the business of supplying PC enthusiasts for over a decade, water cooling product manufacturer Danger Den is in the process of closing its doors and winding down operations.
Long thought of as a pioneer in the water cooling business, Danger Den has announced that its time as a leading manufacturer of everything from CPU blocks to reservoirs to PC cases is coming to an abrupt end. It looks like the viability of supplying and developing new products for an ever-shrinking market was no longer financially viable.
In a short post on their site, Dan, Jeremy, Dennis and Rokk announced their decision: “After 12 years our hobby has come to an end. It’s time to pursue other interests and Danger Den will be closing its doors. Thank you for all your support over the years, we’ve enjoyed being part of your modding community.”
To many, this will be a particularly sad day as Danger Den was always thought of as one of as a major player within the water cooling niche. They have been around since the dawn of liquid cooling and their products were well received by enthusiasts all over the world.
In order to get rid of in-stock merchandise, their online store is offering 75% off every single item until Monday. At this time, there isn’t much left but this could be an opportunity for some people to stock up on parts that won’t be available anymore.by skymtl
We just spent a good amount of time with the iPad mini and the easiest way to describe the device is that it's lighter than you'd expect. The build quality and finish both feel good as you'd expect, but the device is just considerably lighter than the iPad which results in superior in hand feel.
The display doesn't feel cramped either thanks to the reasonably large diagonal size. It's clear that the iPad mini is a nod to those who want something even more portable than the standard iPad.
In terms of performance, there's a pretty noticeable difference between the A5 in the iPad mini and the A6X in the 4th gen iPad as you'd expect. I do wish that Apple had brought the A6 to the mini, however something has to give in pursuit of the lower price point.
The LTE version of the iPad mini has an RF window at the top of the unit similar to the standard iPad, although it does blend in a bit better on the black model. by lai shimpi
Since our last monthly update, Nvidia launched three new graphics cards: the GeForce GTX 650, 650 Ti, and 660.
The GeForce GTX 650 is essentially a GeForce GT 640 with a higher-clocked 1058 MHz core and 1250 MHz GDDR5 (instead of 891 MHz DDR3 memory). That increased memory bandwidth immediately uncorks this card's performance, putting it head-to-head against the Radeon HD 7750. A $120 price point sounds about right until you hop online and see AMD's Radeon HD 7750 selling for $105. The notably faster Radeon HD 7770 goes for $125. After a series of price drops from AMD, the GeForce GTX 650 needs to get closer to $105 before it's really competitive.
Next, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti is built around the same GK106 GPU found on Nvidia's GeForce GTX 660, but with a single GPC cluster disabled. The result is a processor with 768 shaders, 64 texture units, and two ROP partitions capable of 16 raster operations per clock. The card's core operates at 925 MHz, and its GDDR5 memory runs at 1350 MHz. All told, the GeForce GTX 650 Ti outperforms AMD's Radeon HD 6850 and Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460, nearly reaching the same performance levels as the GeForce GTX 560 and Radeon HD 6870. Unfortunately, a rather narrow 128-bit memory interface hampers frame rates at higher resolutions with MSAA enabled. Nevertheless, GeForce GTX 650 Ti is the highest-performing $150 card on the market
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You might think that this fact alone would earn the GeForce GTX 650 Ti an easy recommendation. But AMD's counter-strike cannot be ignored. A discounted 1 GB version of the Radeon HD 7850 for $170. The 650 Ti is quite a bit slower, and saving $20 doesn't make up the difference. Nvidia's other issue is that street prices on the GeForce GTX 650 Ti are notably higher than $155. We'd want to see wider availability in the $140 to $150 range for this new card to earn more than an honorable mention.
Finally, the GeForce GTX 660 employs an uncut version of the same GK106 processor, giving it 960 cores, 80 texture units, and three ROP partitions. It sports a 980 MHz core clock rate and 1502 MHz GDDR5 memory on an aggregate 192-bit interface. Selling for $230, it's very attractive next to a $250 Radeon HD 7870. But because it takes a performance hit when MSAA is applied, it shares our recommendation around $240 with AMD's Radeon card.by don woligroski
